But along the way, he made a deep foray into new technologies that could bring big changes to medicine as well as other aspects of daily life.

A New York City native, Ciuffo shadowed doctors in the city during freshman and sophomore year while also taking computer science courses. His major in computational neuroscience led him to Fordham’s Wireless Sensor Data Mining (WISDM) lab and the study of biometric data.

In the lab, students were exploring the use of smartphones and smartwatches for tracking a wide range of actions, from big movements like standing up and walking to small movements like noshing on potato chips. The devices’ sensors could record anyone’s “signature” way of moving with as much as 98 percent accuracy.

Ciuffo was fascinated. “Our brain-and-body connection is so unique, no matter what we’re doing,” he said.

At the suggestion of lab director Gary Weiss, Ph.D., Ciuffo decided to study something even smaller: the subtle wrist movements that we all make when writing. Other studies of people’s writing motions had relied on custom-made pens or keyboards, Ciuffo said, but he wanted to see what could be done with a wearable device.

With funding from a Fordham Undergraduate Research Grant, he had 24 people wear smartwatches containing gyroscopes and accelerometers while typing and writing by hand. “I didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “Even Gary Weiss was unsure if it was going to work.”

But it did work. The recorded patterns accurately identified the writer 94 to 98 percent of the time. Ciuffo and Weiss wrote up their findings and, in October, presented them at the 8th IEEE Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference, held at Columbia University.

Ciuffo was one of the youngest people there. “I learned a lot of interesting things in the field of machine learning,” he said.

By then, however, he had refocused on becoming a doctor. He works in the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, documenting patients’ medical histories, while preparing to apply to medical school.

He looks forward to working with patients one day, but will also keep his computer skills handy because of the burgeoning potential of biometric data. It could make passwords passé by providing a far more secure way of accessing your home or computer, for instance, and wearable devices could continuously monitor patients’ vital signs and activity over long periods, providing doctors with a wealth of useful information.

“I think there’s going to be an explosion of these wearable technologies that are just going to completely change the way doctors interact with their patients,” he said.

August marks one year since students from the Brazil Scientific Mobility Program (BSMP) arrived on campus. Run by the Institute of International Education and supported by the Brazilian government, BSMP places top-achieving junior and senior students pursuing STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) at U.S. colleges and universities to gain global experience, improve their language skills, and increase international dialogue in science and technology.

The Fordham cohort—Aryadne Guardieiro Pereira Rezende, Tulio Aimola, Caio Batista de Melo, and Dicksson Rammon Oliveira de Almeida—have spent the year studying and researching alongside Fordham students and faculty.

“Fordham is a wonderful university. It teaches you to grow not just as a professional, but also as a person. I loved my semesters there,” said Guardieiro, a computer science major from Uberlandia, Minas Gerais.

Guardieiro worked with Damian Lyons, PhD, professor of computer and information science, on the use of drones to hunt and kill Aedes aegypti mosquitos, which spread diseases such as dengue and Zika virus, both of which are significant problems in Brazil.

“Different fields were available to research here,” said Batista de Melo, a computer science major from Brazil’s capital, Brasília. Batista de Melo researched with Frank Hsu, PhD, the Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science and Professor of Computer and Information Science, in Fordham’s Laboratory of Informatics and Data Mining.

“Our project used IBM’s Watson, which might not have been possible to use in Brazil, since it is such a new technology.”

The program has benefitted both Fordham and Brazilian students alike, said Carla Romney, DSc, associate dean for STEM and pre-health education, who oversaw BSMP at Fordham. Because it’s difficult for science students to devote a full semester to travel, the experience served as a sort of “reverse study abroad” for Fordham students.

“Having international students in the classroom has been an amazing internationalization experience for Fordham students, too,” Romney said. “It brings a different atmosphere into the classroom when you have students with widely divergent viewpoints and experiences. You get to know other cultures, other worlds.”

BSMP students complete two semesters of academic study at an American institution, followed by a summer of experiential learning in the form of internships, research, volunteering, or other types of “academic training.”

Earlier this summer, the four were joined by an additional 17 BSMP students who had been at other American colleges and universities and who took up residence at Fordham to undertake internships and positions at various New York City companies and organizations.

The experience was challenging both academically as well as personally, said Oliveira, a computer science major from Recife, Pernambuco who researched smartwatch applications in the Wireless Sensor and Data Mining (WISDM) lab with Gary Weiss, PhD, associate professor of computer and information science.

“The cultural shock was really unexpected, and for several months it made me feel uneasy,” Oliveira said. “Over time, I learned to overcome it. Being from a predominantly tropical country, I considered the winter to be the greatest challenge of all.”

In addition to culture shock, there was the inevitable loneliness, which Guardieiro said she felt deeply at times. However, she felt supported by her academic adviser and fellow students, and eventually came to love her newfound independence.

“I learned to never lose an opportunity to do what I needed or wanted to just because I did not have company to do so,” she said. “I learned to expose myself to new—and not always comfortable—experiences, and I was amazed with the results I got. I took dancing classes with great teachers, visited places like Wall Street companies and all kinds of museums, and visited many states by myself.”

The Brazilian government recently put a one-year moratorium on the scholarship exchange program, but Romney said Fordham would continue its partnership with the program when it resumes.

When it does, Guardieiro has advice ready for future Fordham-BSMP students:

“Don’t be afraid to do everything you want to… This kind of experience is given to us to learn as much as we can.”

When you go to your doctor’s office for the test, everything comes back normal. But lurking somewhere inside, there is, in fact, an abnormality—it just did not occur during your office visit.

“You’re out of luck,” said Gary Weiss, Ph.D., an associate professor of computer and information sciences.

However, Weiss said, if the capability to monitor your heart were built into your smartphone, “you could be monitored over a longer period of time, as opposed to just a few minutes, which provides a lot more data.”

Mobile health and smart technology

With the advent of smart technology, that capability has become a reality. Originally designed to give doctors access to patients in remote, rural areas of developing countries, mobile health platforms have since proliferated. In just seven years, these devices have grown increasingly more complex. They can now accomplish tasks as simple as counting the number of steps you take and as sophisticated as checking glucose levels in your blood.

Weiss, who is the director of Fordham’s Wireless Sensor Data Mining (WISDM) Lab, has been making a foray into the field of mobile health by applying his research on activity-recognition to the newest member of the “smart” family, “smartwatches.” The WISDM lab’s latest work builds on the Actitracker, an application (“app”) for Android-based cell phones that the lab launched in 2013.

Using a built-in sensor called an accelerometer, the app detects and identifies the user’s physical activities, such as sitting, walking, jogging, standing, or climbing stairs. It then compiles the results so that the user knows how many minutes per day are spent sitting, standing, etc. When the app “learns” the nuances of its user’s movements using a built-in “self-training mode,” it yields results that are up to 98 percent accurate.

“The project was funded because of its potential to help combat obesity,” said Weiss, who received a National Science Foundation “Smart and Connected Health” grant for the project. “But it can really help with a lot of issues. For instance, tracking how someone walks could detect if they have any gait problems. Or we might be able to track depression if someone is spending the majority of the time lying down.”

Integrating Actitracker with smartwatches will make the app even more sophisticated, Weiss said, because it will be able to detect activities such as eating or drinking.

“A smartphone in your pocket is limited, because it really can only detect your leg motions, specifically the top of the legs. The smartwatch, though, will also be able to detect hand motions to identify activities like eating and drinking,” Weiss said.

For those who need to monitor their diets, having an app that can call attention to food intake can be invaluable. For instance, Weiss said, when the watch detects that you are eating, it could prompt you to add an entry to your food diary. Or, when it detects that you are drinking something, it might ask about the sugar content of your drink and advise accordingly.

Smartwatches arrive at the WISDM Lab

Sophomore Andrew Johnston is one of the students working on smartwatches in the WISDM lab.

“The accelerometer and gyroscope give feedback in terms of the number of steps you’re taking and there’s also a heartbeat sensor to take your pulse throughout the day,” said Johnston, a computer science and mathematics major.

“No one is doing activity-recognition with smartwatches right now, so we’re looking to corner the market there.”

Johnston is also doing research in biometrics, the study of distinctive, measureable human traits such as fingerprints or DNA. Johnston’s research focuses on using biometric markers for identity and security purposes—in other words, using things like voice or gait recognition in lieu of passwords.

“The problem with passwords is that they’re really weak,” Johnston said. “People who come up with them design them to be memorable. Which means that most of the time they’re also guessable.”

The process involves just a few steps, Johnston said. For instance, if you wanted to program a smartwatch to open a locked door using gait recognition, you would first demonstrate to the watch how you walk. Then the watch and the door would be programmed to associate your particular gait with the action “unlock door.” Thus, when you approach the door, the watch and door compare your walk with the profile on file, and if they match, the door unlocks.

“Moving to biometrics would make it more difficult for someone to get unauthorized access, because it’s a lot harder to guess how I walk than to guess something I use as my password,” Johnston said, adding that biometrics could ultimately be used for social media profiles and even electronic bank accounts.

Currently, the team is conducting experiments with the smartwatch and plans to have it integrated into the Actitracker app within six months. In the meantime, Weiss has submitted another grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to continue expanding their work with activity recognition—including integrating the app with social media so that users can broadcast their results.

“There are companies interested in this type of technology. Some startups have contacted us,” Weiss said. “All of this is now becoming technologically feasible because of the ubiquity of these powerful devices.”